Colgate Love Stories: Jeffrey Kaufman ’78 and Nancy Gorman ’80

Autumn 2017
Wedding portrait of Jeffrey Kaufman ’78 and Nancy Gorman ’80

Jeffrey Kaufman ’78 and Nancy Gorman ’80

Following Colgate, I went to law school and got my first job in New York City with the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. Working hard as a young associate, I was heading off to the office at 6:30 a.m. one hot summer morning to catch the subway at 6th Avenue and 16th Street. There was a young lady trying to get through the turnstile, but her token was stuck (back then, we still used tokens). I helped her get her token out of the machine, and we walked back to the main entrance at 14th Street because there were no attendants at the 16th Street entrance.

We started talking about why she was heading to work so early. She was off to do an inventory review for her accounting firm, and after talking further, I found out that she went to graduate school with my boss. We rode the train together for a few stops. I wanted to see her again, but I was not comfortable asking my boss for a friend’s number for a date.

Today they might call it stalking, but I started checking mailboxes in nearby apartments to find her. Then, purely by chance, I met Nancy a second time on the streets of New York when heading home from buying groceries. (She was impressed that I was buying a week’s worth of groceries.)

Nancy gave me her office number, I called her, and we met for lunch. Over lunch at a Greek restaurant, we were filling each other in on our backgrounds, and she said, “I went to Colgate.” I apparently made a funny face, because she said, “You’ve probably never heard of it — it’s a small school in upstate New York.”

After our lunch, Nancy called her dear friend Nancy Baldwin ’78 to check me out. Nancy Baldwin had this advice for Nancy Gorman:

1. If you do not go out with him, you are stupid;

2. If you do not go out with him, I want his telephone number; and

3. Just because he is everything your mother would love is not a reason not to go out with him.

We dated for two years before getting married in 1984. Nancy Baldwin sang at our wedding, as did Clare Kilpatrick ’78. They are both still very close, dear friends.

— Jeffrey Kaufman ’78 (and Nancy Gorman ’80)